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| Friday, June 29, 2007 |
| The Definition of Professional |
pro-fes-sion-al- adj. - Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career
writ-er- n. - a person engaged in writing books, articles, stories, etc., esp. as an occupation or profession
When I was in college, all I wanted in the world was to be able to call myself a writer. It was, I figured, a pursuit that likely would never come to fruition. Writing doesn't pay well, you see, and unfortunately I was not all that keen on living with my parents. So instead of devoting myself to a craft I loved so much, instead of taking the risk, going to graduate school and immersing myself in literary endeavors, I did what so many of my fellow word-loving-geeks do: I got a job fixing other people's writing. I went into publishing.
There has not been a day since when I have not participated in some sort of writing activity. Who knew college professors don't actually know how to write their own textbooks!
My word quota has upped significantly in the past couple of years as I've moved into the nonprofit sector. Turns out "Publications Manager" and "Online Content Manager" are just fancy ways to say: you're going to write until your fingers get all puffy. Articles, announcements, newsletters, direct mail campaigns, websites, brochures, you name it, I've probably written it.
But through all this, I never thought of myself as a writer. A writer was someone who writes books or poems or articles. Who doesn't go into an office every day. And yet yesterday, someone I highly respect introduced me via email to someone as a "Professional Writer". I almost laughed. Who did he think he was kidding? I'm not a professional writer! I'm a professional ...
hmm.
Hold on a second ...
Holy crap!
A professional is someone who gets paid to do something right? Ok, so I get paid to sit here and write copy all day ...
Damn. Turns out I'm a writer after all.Labels: work, writing |
posted by FINY @ Friday, June 29, 2007   |
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| Friday, December 01, 2006 |
| The End of Nanowrimo ... or: How Real Life Got In The Way |
35,372. That's as far as I got. Part of me is supremely disappointed, another part of me is just happy to be writing again. Happy to have found a project that I am emotionally and intellectually excited by. Overjoyed to have found characters I enjoy. And frankly amazed that it took me this long to feel that spark again.
In the end, my work situation was what did me in. My down time now is devoted to the job hunt. Writing resumes, cover letters, etc. Actually, if you factor all of the things I've written in the last month into my word count: this blog, the letters, etc. I've probably well exceeded the 50K goal. Just not on one project ;).
Any suggestions on looking for a new position would be greatly appreciated. I am currently using:
Indeed.com
Mediabistro
Hotjobs
CareerBuilder
Monster
HigherEdJobs (cause hey, why not try to get a job AND a free Masters?)
Idealist
plus various company emploment opportunity webpages. I've sent out emails to my friends, former employers, and family. I've posted resumes online. I've done everything I can possibly think of. Landing my current position ended up being a complete stroke of luck. A friend I hadn't talked to in ages worked here and saw a "Please Help Me" posting I put up on myspace. I don't know that I am going to be that lucky this time. So any advice, what to do, what to avoid, where to go, etc. Would be greatly GREATLY appreciated. The idea of being unemployed in NYC right after the holidays is not an appealing thought.Labels: Unemployment, writing |
| posted by FINY @ Friday, December 01, 2006 |
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| Tuesday, November 21, 2006 |
| Homeward Bound |
Homeward bound, I wish I was, homeward bound
Oh wait, I am! And I couldn't be happier about it. I know I'll miss NYC while I'm gone, and I will most definitely miss my kitty, who I leave in Meegan's more than capable hands, but God I just can't wait to round the bend on Rt. 114 in East Providence and see Hundred Acre Cove. To walk into my family room to be wrapped into a never-ending hug from my mother. To see my little brother who's home on his first college break. To visit with family, and friends, and eat turkey, and stuffing, and everything else that goes along with Thanksgiving.
I'm not bringing any books on the train ride. Or magazines. Or DVDs, crosswords, or any other piece of paraphernalia that could possibly keep my entertained on my 4 hour train ride home other than my laptop and a pen and notebook. I will be doing nothing but writing tonight, and every night from here on until the 30th. I'm woefully behind in my word count, but I feel like my plot has finally got some traction, my characters are taking on a certain amount of depth, and I'm finally starting to feel a little hopeful that this project might actually be worth revising in the end instead of simply walking away from which is what I've wanted to do to every other piece of writing I've gotten down on paper in the last four years.
And now, here's the admission I've been avoiding making.
Oh God, am I really going to tell you this?
Well, I have to now, since I've teased you with it.
Ok, dear internet, this book I'm working on? It's ... it's ... it's chick lit! Part of me wants to hang my BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing filled head in shame. But the bigger part of me? The one that's pushing me through this entire Nanowrimo experience, hasn't had this much fun writing in a long long LONG time. So judge me if you must, and I know some people who read here will, but I'm about to finish writing an entire novel in one month and I've never been happier doing it. What have YOU done this month?Labels: family, Rhode Island, writing |
| posted by FINY @ Tuesday, November 21, 2006 |
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| Monday, November 13, 2006 |
| And Just As An Update |
I'm WAY behind on my word count for Nanowrimo, but still committed to finishing my novel by the 30th. Recent favorite dialogue exchange:
"Well, it doesn't look like you exactly came from a rousing game of paintball now does it?" She said, cocking one eyebrow.
His laugh was deep and hearty, "Sure felt like one. Bad blind date; even worse than a paintball to the groin."
Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Monday, November 13, 2006 |
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| Wednesday, November 01, 2006 |
| 1,888 Words Down, 48,112 To Go |
Favorite sentence from tonight's writing endeavors?:
No one, and I mean no one, should have to look at your naked, fat ass while sober."
I'm 5 pages in and I have no idea where the hell this is going, but hey, at least I started. Here's to 29 more days of writing complete crap.Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Wednesday, November 01, 2006 |
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| Tuesday, October 31, 2006 |
| And The Countdown Begins |
A little under twelve hours from now, National Novel Writing Month begins. Over the past few weeks I have had debates about the various merits and down-sides of trying to write a novel this way, but none of them has stopped my enthusiasm. I'm pumped. No really. I am.
Ok, and scared. How in the HELL am I supposed to write 50,000 words in 30 days?
What's making me a bit more anxious is that I've decided to go a completely different way than I originally planned. I was going to resurrect my characters from last year's attempt in an effort to see if I could get them to take me in another direction. But a few days ago I had a bit of an epiphany, scrapped the idea completely, and am now staring at pages of notes on this random storyline populated with characters I didn't even know were in my head.
It's going to be an interesting month.Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Tuesday, October 31, 2006 |
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| Monday, October 23, 2006 |
| Thoughts on Slam Poetry |
written on the N train to Brooklyn
I. Am not a poet.
I don't deal in rhythm and rhyme.
In syncopated beats.
I write narrative and character.
I don't wax poetic.
No, I am not one of you.
But I wandered into your world
Listened as you shouted out
Words that are straight from
The thesaurus.
You in your designer jeans
You NYU graduate student security.
Talking about poverty, race, and oppression.
Why do you think that I don't understand?
Why do I feel like the minority here?
Why are you sinking to their level.
Because I don't see you that way.
Your white chocolate mocha skin
Does not affect the way I see you.
And I know that doesn't make me the average American
But you quoted James Baldwin when you started
So why the fuck are you writing for the average American anyway.
A friend once told me I wasn't what I said I was
Irish and Italian from generations past.
I'm a fucking American.
And so are you.
Be proud of your heritage
But don't let it become you.
We are all
More than that.
I am not a poet.
But I have to wonder why the only two white girls I see
Getting up to the mike
Are talking about rape.
And abandonment.
As if that's all there is to being a woman.
Where did all the happy poems go?
Why is it all gender, and race, and violation, and poverty
Spouting form the lips of people paying
$35,000 a year to stay out of the real world.
Yes, I know it all exists
And yes, I know that it's horrible.
But do you really know?
Or are you just looking for credibility.
Great poetry leaps off the page
It shakes walls
Crumbles foundations.
I am not a poet.
But are you?Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Monday, October 23, 2006 |
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| Thursday, October 19, 2006 |
| Trying Again |
 Every November, thousands of writers across the country, and even across the world, set out to do what for me (up to this point anyway) has been impossible: to write a novel.
But there is a catch to National Novel Writing Month - you have to complete the project in a month. That's right, 50,000 words in exactly one month. You can outline your plot, create character sketches, do any background work you want to, but when it comes to actual writing, all of it has to be completely new, and totally original.
The beauty of the idea, at least from my perspective, is that since it is completely based on word count instead of content, you can write absolute crap for pages and pages. Hell at the end you may only have three pages worth anything. But it's three pages more than you had when you started now isn't it.
I tried last year. I think I got to about 2,500 words. I was thinking too hard and I know it. You can see me rant about my characters from last year here. This year that changes. This year, I don't care what it takes, I'm reaching 50,000. I'll write in the bar, I'll write on the subway, I will write every minute I'm not at work, I am going to write a novel if it kills me.
And to be honest, it may very well do just that.Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Thursday, October 19, 2006 |
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| Tuesday, July 25, 2006 |
| Blinded |
I know it's tough to tell from what I write in this space, but I care a ridiculous amount about grammar. The written word is precious to me. Sure when I blog I throw all grammar, punctuation, and spelling rules out the window, but it's mainly because I spend all day getting paid to agonize over whether our organization should hyphenate the word email or not (my feeling is not. When the internet and email were first emerging the word was hyphenated as an abbreviated way of indicating that it was "electronic mail". At this point, email is so ingrained in our culture the hyphen is no longer needed. We all know it's electronic by now).
But I do care. A lot. Especially when it comes to the publications I work on. I take pride in what I do, and how hard I work to do it. So when I received the call that one of our publications had arrived from the printer (well the overages had after being sent out to all 33,000 people on our mailing list) I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait to see it. I had poured over this thing for months. 24 pages of articles, some I'd written, all I'd edited, I couldn't wait to see the final product.
But then I flipped through. And in just those few seconds I realized that that was a bad idea. I should have held onto that moment longer. That "Oh, Wow, look what I did" moment. Because the minute I cracked the spine with was over. Two typos immediately stuck out, and this thing, this project, that had become my baby for the last few months, was dirtied.
And it's stupid because really? If I am honest with myself, not many people read this thing. Just thinking about how many mailers I get from various non-profit organizations, and knowing that 99.9% of them end up in the trash, is enough to make that point hit home. And one of the typos I doubt anyone will even notice. But I did. And I will every time I look at the damn thing now.
So I ended up being blinded by a lot of things. Blinded by the sheer repetition of the proofing cycle. So blinded that I completely missed things that should have been obvious. I was blinded by my minds eye which scientifically does actually see what you want it to see at certain times. And I was blinded by my rage at myself. That I couldn't do what I get paid to do - catch the errors.
This is what happens when all of the publications flow through one person. And Mom and DTR and a number of other people tried to tell me no one is perfect. But when it comes to the written word that is actually exactly what I am paid for. To fix mistakes. To be perfect.
And I want to write about how great the weekend was, and how I think my favorite part was Sunday when all we did was buy the Twin some glasses, catch a movie, and hang out at some bookstores, and how that makes me feel a little old but I don't really care. But instead I'm still fuming at myself. And sitting here wondering how to snap myself out of it.Labels: work, writing |
| posted by FINY @ Tuesday, July 25, 2006 |
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| Friday, November 11, 2005 |
| NaNoWriMo |
So I have mentioned before that I am participating in National Novel Writing Month. I thought this was going to be a great way for me to get back into writing fiction. To just throw caution to the wind and sit down and WRITE. This blog has functioned as a perfect way for me to get back into the habit of writing every day and to at least keep my writing skills from getting all fuzzy and cobwebbed, but I felt like it was time to get back up on the horse.
It’s not going as well as I would have hoped.
I’ve just got to write. I know my characters. I know my plot. I know what issues I am trying to explore through those characters and that plot. I just can’t get it OUT.
It’s possible that I’ve chosen too tough a situation for my characters, and that the focus of my story is too far out of my realm of knowledge. I’m a 25 year old New Yorker. Trying to write a 70-something, early-stages-of-Alzheimer’s-suffering, unhappy Rhode Islander is impossibly frustrating. There is simply no way I am going to be able to write 50,000 words in 20 days. That's like, 2,500 words a day!
Most everything I’ve written thus far has been detailed outlines, and in-depth character studies. The character studies came after diving into the work itself and realizing that the dialogue just did not sound believable. I couldn’t find their voices. So I got to know them a bit. I wrote from their perspectives. I let them tell me stories about their lives. I let them develop.
But more important than that word count is the fact that now that I know these characters so well, I really care about them. I feel like I am letting them down by not getting their stories out. Yeah, Tess is an ornery pain in the ass but she has her reasons. Her husband’s desertion of her thirty years past still feels as fresh as the day it happened. And her strained relationship with her daughter because of that desertion has only heightened her withdrawal into herself. But lately it’s been more than that. She’s forgetting things. More importantly she’s forgetting things because she can’t concentrate on them. She’ll be in the middle of conversations and she won’t be able to remember the word for the simplest things. And as she’s searching for the word she’ll just go completely blank, and look up at her conversant as if she’s woken up from a long sleep. This would happen to her as a girl but usually she was just daydreaming. This is a completely different sensation and it’s one that is scaring and irritating her.
She’s found herself sticking to familiar situations, strict schedules, places she knows well. She’s taken to asking people to repeat things, only louder, please. Which is only a trick to mask the fact that she can’t remember what they said just moments before. She’s gone into hiding. From her family (what little there is left still speaking to her) from her friends, from her doctors. Verity is the only one whom she sees every day and she is seemingly oblivious to the subtle signs of aging that Tess is trying so desperately to hide.
And Verity has her own reasons for being so oblivious. In addition to her friend being such a brilliant actress, Tess has enveloped herself in a self-absorbed bubble. In her late sixties she has finally found herself able to focus on her own happiness. Not the happiness of her husband, who was twenty years her senior and passed away when the boys were still children. Not the safety of her kids, who she raised on her own while working as a nurse, who have all gone on to start their own families, not her patients, who had come to rely on her to be the only smile they saw as they lay suffering from a myriad of ailments. She’s completely free to be self-indulgent and she is loving every second of it.
The only reasons she keeps to any sort of schedule is because Tess insists on it. But she loves her time with Tess, loves trying to break down her tough, bitter exterior. Plus she absolutely loves the six block walk to the bakery that they take every day, extra early, in order to miss the morning rush. It gives her a chance to gaze into those big windows of the brownstones that line the streets and stare at the Mahogany walls and wall-to-ceiling built in bookcases. To create lives for the people who live inside those brownstones. To imagine herself in those lives.
It’s amazing how attached you can become to characters you create. They’re not real people, they’re not going to be mad at me if I toss them into the breeze, but I feel like there’s so much there, and that others should get the opportunity to meet them too.
I just need to get it all down on paper.
It’s going to be a long 20 days.Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Friday, November 11, 2005 |
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| Tuesday, October 11, 2005 |
| A Letter From My Creative Self |
Hey Finy, over here! No, not that way, over HERE.
There, Hi, remember me? That short story collection idea you’ve had ruminating for five years now? The one you chickened out on while deciding what direction to go in while writing your senior thesis? Remember that? Yeah, I’m still here, bitch. Now take me out for a spin.
See, I’m getting pretty damned bored back here. I keep pointing out things that would work. Those postcards you keep picking up and stashing away in a drawer? I wanted to USE them damnit. I mean you’ve made me some nice accommodations back here. It’s a little dusty, but that image of the Brooklyn bridge you hung on the wall was a nice touch, and I loved the cushions stuffed with fuzzy sentence beginnings, but seriously, it’s time to stop decorating.
I’ve gained a ton of weight. I’m growing fat on excuses and junk food. I got lazy for a while. But I’m sick of it. Honestly. You and I used to work as a team. We used to sit on the banks of the Charles alone save for a pencil and that tacky notebook you insisted on writing in.
I know you’re scared but fuck it! You don’t like what I give you? Fine, don’t show it to anyone. But don’t just leave me alone back here with the rest of the unfinished goals you’ve set for yourself. That ass that keeps singing the national anthem over and over again is getting fucking annoying let me tell you.
That’s right, get mad at me. Get pissed! Punch me! Whip me back into shape. Do SOMETHING. Because I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep tapping on the base of your subconscious until you just want to scream. Everyone else back here is content to only appear to you in dreams. The marathoner’s been running in place for years! I’m not going to be like that, man, I’m not going to sit here and let you just go about boozing it up and just talking about me. I can hear you you know. I can hear you TALKING about me, THINKING about me, but not actually doing a damn thing about it.
Get up off your lazy ass, bitch. We’ve got work to do.
Annoyingly yours,
The IdeaLabels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005 |
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| National Novel Writing Month |
This is an incredible idea. I can't even do it justice. I doubt I would succeed, but I am seriously thinking of participating:
National Novel Writing Month
Here's my favorite part of the FAQs page:
If I'm just writing 50,000 words of crap, why bother? Why not just write a real novel later, when I have more time?
There are three reasons.
1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.
2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.
3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.
To think about it practically, figure one single spaced typed page equals approximately 500 words. 50,000 words breaks down into about 1,600 words a day. So you're only looking at three or four pages a day. Easily doable. Yeah, it will probably be crap and no, I probably will not end up finishing, but this is the kind of thing that might actually be able to snap me out of the fiction writing funk I've been in for, oh, I don't know, the last couple years. Thanks to Dave Copeland for pointing this out!Labels: writing |
| posted by FINY @ Tuesday, October 11, 2005 |
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